All That Fills Us , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Autumn Lytle

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172 pages

English

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Mel Ellis knows that her eating disorder is ruining her life. Everyone tells her rehab is her best option, but she can't bring herself to go. Broken and empty in more ways than one, Mel makes one last-ditch effort to make hers a story worth telling. She will walk her own road to recovery along the lesser-known trails of the North American wilderness.Though she is physically and mentally unprepared to face the difficulties that lay ahead, she sets off on foot from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and heads toward Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State. During the long journey, she meets strangers with their own stories, as well as ghosts from her past who can no longer be ignored. But though the land she travels threatens her success at every turn, it's her own dark thoughts she'll have to overcome in order to find peace in the life and the body she has been given.With pitch-perfect timing and delightfully witty self-awareness, debut author Autumn Lytle masterfully leads readers on a journey down the hard path toward healing.

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	03 mai 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493436330
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0384€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Endorsements
“Stories can enlarge our capacity for empathy. In her brave and compelling novel, All That Fills Us , Autumn Lytle grants us the privilege of inhabiting the mind and heart of a young woman battling an eating disorder. Nothing is concealed here; the fears, shame, self-hatred, and obsessive thoughts that plague and assault Mel Ellis provide opportunities for us to explore our own shadows in the light of God’s grace and compassion. Mel’s journey toward revelation and hope is an invitation for us to see ourselves as God sees us and to discover—or rediscover—why our stories matter.”
Sharon Garlough Brown , author of Shades of Light and the Sensible Shoes series
“You don’t have to have poor body image or an eating disorder to be fed by the charmingly disarming debut novel All That Fills Us . I did not want this story to end. With humor and compassion, intricate insights, and singular descriptions, Autumn Lytle has captured the pain of encroaching mental illness. She’s also taken us on a journey with words to breach wounds and remind us of the grace of unexpected community. May there be many more healing stories from this truly gifted author.”
Jane Kirkpatrick , bestselling author of The Healing of Natalie Curtis
“Brimming with beauty and perfectly paced, this poignant novel connected with me in ways I didn’t think a story about a girl with an eating disorder could. I was stunned to see so much of myself in the character of Mel—striving to achieve, consistently hard on herself, and hoping that her efforts might amount to something meaningful in the end. Autumn Lytle’s moving debut is one of those books that will linger in the hearts and minds of those who read it.”
Erin Bartels , award-winning author of All That We Carried
“Autumn Lytle’s All That Fills Us takes the reader on a journey they will not expect—both as they accompany the main character’s physical adventure and her emotional pilgrimage. But it’s a story that will truly make the reader believe they know and may have embraced—or perhaps are—the main character. They’ll also want to play all the supporting cast member roles (or most of them) and will emerge from the reading experience wholly altered. Rich imagery, emotive language, and relationship tangles that snarl and resolve under the hand of a gifted writer.”
Cynthia Ruchti , author of Miles from Where We Started, Afraid of the Light , and Facing the Dawn
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2022 by Autumn Lytle
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3633-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.
Dedication
For those who welcome the constant ache of hunger like an old friend, yet still long to be filled.
Contents
Cover
Endorsements
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Back Ads
Back Cover
Prologue
SOMETIME IN JUNE SOMEWHERE IN NORTH DAKOTA
I think there was a time in my life when I used to be dry and warm, but I can’t remember it. Have you ever wondered what’s worse than walking through North Dakota? It’s walking through North Dakota during a weeklong rainstorm. Oh, and remove shelters of any kind, along with the illusion of replacing your soaked socks with a pair of dry ones. Trudging through the same mile I swear I’ve been walking for hours, I curse the ugly, swollen gray sky. I curse the lakes that used to be my hiking boots. I curse this ridiculous state that can somehow see a week of driving rain and still be brown and scorched-looking everywhere. I curse this stupid hike, and most of all, my stupid self for ever coming up with this stupid plan.
At least at this point there’s a bit of tree cover. I left the endless plains a few miles back for a brief stroll through the forest, where the rain let up enough for me to see more than two inches in front of my face. But my lackluster optimism fades when either a few minutes or several decades later, I come across a massive beast of a tree that would have struck wonder into my heart if it had been vertical instead of lying very horizontally and stubbornly in my way. Beyond the mocking tree giant, I can make out what could only be described as a wall of stones that some disturbed trailblazer had once decided would be fun to make people climb up. Even from this distance, I can see that the stones have razor-sharp edges and slick surfaces and are my only way forward. Wasn’t all of North Dakota supposed to be flat? And dry? And boring, easy terrain? Maybe I’m not even in North Dakota at this point. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me.
I look down and around me at the brown earth, the brown shrubs, the brown spindly trees. I take a moment to consider that this probably isn’t the nicest place to give up, lie down, and die. I look ahead again. The tree is still there. So are the rocks. It is going to be a hideous mess getting through this. But after a week pruning in the rain, I am a hideous mess to match.
With an animalistic cry, I try to throw my backpack over the fallen tree. Nine attempts later, it actually makes it all the way to the other side. Then, sighing with all the weariness I can muster, I lower myself onto the soggy, slimy earth and wiggle my way underneath the tree. I emerge on the other side more mud than human but feeling accomplished for the first time in days. Taking a brief intermission from patting myself on the back, I glance around for my pack, then search more feverishly when it doesn’t appear. Eventually I see it. Staring, I almost hope this is some sort of joke. I should look around for a hidden camera and brace myself for some obnoxious TV show host to jump out of the bushes and yell “Gotcha!”
Nothing happens. Except it keeps raining, of course. And mud is now slithering down my back. And somehow into my pants. And my backpack remains halfway down a mud-slicked, comically steep ravine nestled in a grove of what I am one hundred and ten percent sure is poison ivy.
Literally between a rock and a hard place, I am left with no choice but to begin the slow, possibly deadly slide down the ravine. I get on my hands and knees and leave any remaining dignity I had at the top of the ravine. For a distraction, I start listing all the things I hate.
Myself, obviously. This hike. This rain. This godforsaken state.
I grab on to a muddy root as my boots struggle to find traction. My limp hair is in my face—a squirrel’s nest of knots and tangles. My arms are covered in scratches, mud, and blood. My clothes are so drenched and torn, I’m practically immodest at this point. But there’s a hint of a grin on my face. Because if I die here, at least my obituary won’t accuse me of never doing anything memorable.
1

EARLY MAY
The worst part of regaining consciousness was the slow and unavoidable realization that the life I was waking up to was hardly worth the effort.
It didn’t help the situation to realize I was back in the hospital, gown and all. I would never know exactly what happened in the time I was unconscious, but I could guarantee it was awkward, embarrassing, and involved being naked in front of medical personnel. I tried to pretend to sleep, but it was pointless. The blissful ignorance of the unconscious was long gone.
I could have postponed whatever was coming next by faking sleep for a few more hours, but a lack of patience had always found a comfortable place on my list of flaws, so I braced myself and opened my eyes.
My grandma glanced up from her magazine with a look just shy of a glare. I couldn’t blame her. If I wasn’t even happy to be awake, how could I expect anyone else to be?
“Nice of you to join us,” she said before returning to her magazine.
“What’d I miss?”
“Nothing that paints you in a good light, I can assure you.”
I could have guessed that. “Well, that’s a shame. Who was my knight in shining armor this time?”
“A group of young men walking by the parking lot of your work. There you were, passed out for the whole world to see.” She lowered her magazine just slightly. “Do you realize how lucky you are that they were the kind of men who call 911 when they find a young woman passed out in a parking lot instead of a group of rapists and murderers? Now you’re here. You hit your head on the way down, but you’ll be fine. Oh, and we have another ambulance bill added to our tab. I’m sure your parents will be thrilled.”
I thought this over for a moment. A small part of me worried how strange it was for me to feel nothing about this new information. Normal people felt embarrassment after this sort of thing, right? There was, of course, the ever-present shadow of guilt for dragging innocent bystanders and my grandma deeper into my mess. But these days, that wasn’t anything new.
Sometimes that gnawing guilt could be drowned out with a poor attempt at comedy. I turned to my grandma. “Were any of the guys cute? Any of them leave me their number?” When she put down her Better Homes and Gardens and shot me what was now certainly a